Scholar in Smuggling Trial Switches to a Guilty Plea

By EDDY RAMÍREZ

Published: August 4, 2004

Anoted Middle East scholar pleaded guilty yesterday to smuggling stolen Mesopotamian relics from Iraq last year and lying to federal customs officials when he said he had never traveled to the country.

The scholar, Joseph Braude, the author of "The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World," entered guilty pleas to three counts in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on the second day of testimony in his trial.

Mr. Braude admitted that on June 11, 2003, he returned to New York with three 4,000-year-old marble and alabaster stone seals that he believed had been stolen from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

He also admitted that he had lied to customs agents at Kennedy International Airport when he told them that he had never traveled to Iraq, hoping to keep them from searching his suitcase.

He had wrapped each of the seals in tissue paper and tucked them away in a plastic case in his suitcase.

"I accept responsibility for my conduct, and I deeply regret my actions," Mr. Braude told Judge Allyne R. Ross as a number of family members looked on.

Judge Ross scheduled sentencing for Oct. 25. Mr. Braude, 29, could be put on probation or sentenced to up to 16 months in prison, his lawyer said.

The defendant announced his decision to change his plea to guilty after he conferred with family members in a courthouse hallway. Later, outside the courtroom, he declined to tell reporters why he decided to plead guilty.

Standing beside him, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, sought to explain Mr. Braude's original insistence on going ahead with a trial even though, Mr. Brafman said, he had advised him otherwise.

"It's sometimes the case that a good person takes a very long time to accept that he has violated the law because of the way he has lived his whole life," Mr. Brafman said.

A graduate of Yale and Princeton, Mr. Braude spent much of the last decade traveling throughout the Arab world and became fluent in Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew. He worked at an Islamic archive in the United Arab Emirates, where he helped recover and preserve antique Arabic manuscripts. He has been a federal consultant on terrorist activities.

Mr. Braude, who lives in Providence, R.I., pleaded guilty to smuggling, lying to a federal agent and misstating the value of the artifacts on his customs declaration form.

In testimony yesterday, Marguerite Caropolo, a senior customs inspector at Kennedy Airport, testified that on his return from London, Mr. Braude handed her a customs declaration form stating that he had traveled only to London and Kuwait City. He was escorted to pick up his suitcase and denied to agents that he had traveled to Iraq, Ms. Caropolo said.

Only after she searched his suitcase and found business cards with Iraqi addresses and the three cylindrical seals did Mr. Braude admit that he had been to Iraq, she testified.

Referring to the seals, he told her, "That's just junk," Ms. Caropolo said, adding that he said, "I just bought them from a vendor in Baghdad."

Mr. Brafman had argued that his client had not lied to the customs agents because he eventually told them in a private search room that he had gone to Baghdad where he had obtained the seals.

The judge, however, ruled that she would instruct jurors that answers a defendant knows to be incomplete are considered false statements even if the defendant later discloses more information.

After the plea was changed, the United States attorney's office said: "Through his guilty plea Mr. Braude admitted that he knew exactly what he was doing - smuggling precious antiquities looted from the Iraqi people. The federal government is committed to prosecuting those who attempt to purloin these treasures, in order to protect the world's archaeological heritage."